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5 thoughts on “VueStar and all their smarts”

Different patent?
Is it a different patent? The one ‘advertised’ in the letters and on their site is SG Patent #95940, entitled “METHOD OF LOCATING WEB-PAGES BY UTILISING VISUAL IMAGES”.
Patent #118384 which you’ve referenced was filed later, with different AU patents used for claiming priority.

Re: Different patent?
take a look at the Keystone advisory, chiangfong. “Patent Publication number 95940 was granted via the Patent Cooperation Treat process following the grant of a patent by the Australian Patent Office in 2003.”
-jf

Application to revoke?
There are a few avenues to clean up our imaginary property ecosystem in the patent arena:
1. Cure = Pest control: when insects are observed scurrying in dark corners, fumigate the rooms. This is what organisations like PubPat do in the US (e.g. getting the Microsoft patent on the FAT file system revoked), and since large chunks of US imaginary property law have been imported into Singapore, what’s good for the mother ship should be great for the satellite.
So… over here we have Section 80 of the Patents Act, which states a process to have the patent registrar review and revoke patents that have been issued (on the grounds of non-patentability through obviousness, prior art, or otherwise). The sticking point seems to be money, though… the IPOS web site helpfully includes the patent revocation application form (Form PF35) with which you can lodge your very own application to revoke for the low low price of $500. Perhaps there should be a common fund approach (that would extend to legal fees)?
2. Prevention = OB markers: fumigation won’t work if there are piles of rotting garbage in the void deck with signs that say “INSECTS – APPLY HERE!”. Software patents are not (supposed to be) allowed in the EU but were allowed in the US by court decision, which is being revisited by the US federal appeals court. No software development of more than trivial size can now take place without potentially running foul of software patents.
Therefore, to prevent more hordes of insects from chomping through our favourite SG websites and applications, the Patents Act needs to be amended to make it very clear that inventions can’t be patented if they don’t do anything in the absence of a computer to run them on. Copyright is plenty protection for those items.

Application to revoke? contd
Also, there’s http://refutevuestarpatent.biz/, reported in the Straits Times to be set up by a postgrad student seeking collective action to contest the patent.
Now, since Google Image Search is directly implicated by this patent and Google has as many as three subsidiaries in Singapore, one wonders if they would be interested in supporting a revocation effort?